2011-2012 Recap.

So it has been awhile to say the least, and I want to "get the blog going again" (as I like to think of it), but for some reason I cannot get going again with out recapping what has been going on with me over the past 8 months or so.  If these sort of posts bore you, then just skip this one, but just know I have crafty ones on the way!

So back in September, I started my junior year of nursing school.  It was crazy, I had classes like "Acute Care I & II", "Pharmacology", and my Adult Medical Surgical Rotation at a hospital.  The semester was really tough, but I pushed through, learned a lot, and saw a lot.  I had planned on having a really creative, relaxing and fun Winter break in December, but as I mentioned in one of my last posts, some where between Thanksgiving and Christmas I got some pretty devastating news that my Mom  had stage IV colon cancer.  I spent nearly my whole Christmas break pondering on whether or not I should continue with school or quit school to help with my mom.

Well, ultimately I decided to stay in school.  It was a difficult decision, but with living over an hour away from my Mom and having 3 small children to care for, I decided that realistically even if I was not in school I could still only make it over to my Mom's house once or twice a week to help.  So in January I started an even more grueling schedule of school 4 days a week, all day on Friday with Mom, and weekends to catch up on housework/errands/studying.  I was not left with much time for crafting, but when I did, it was usually something for my Mom. 

This is a dala horse softie I made for Mom using my "Bonus Softie Size Dala Horse II" pattern that comes included in my Scandinavian Birds II pdf.

During my second semester I still maintained my grades despite the grueling schedule (having to wake up at 4 am for clinical days!), the worry over my Mom and other obstacles.  I was even inducted into Sigma Theta Tau which is an international Nursing Honors Society. 

Once I got through finals and school was over in April, I felt like I had so much to catch up on around the house.  Last summer I started my oldest son's room.  He turned 9, and I just felt like his jungle theme was no longer cutting it, and decided to move to more of a color based theme that could grow with him through his preteen years.  The color palette centered mostly around a cement gray color with pops of cobalt/royal blue.  Shades of a lighter blue and khaki were also to be worked in.  Well, I only got about 30% done before school started in September, and his room basically sat like that until this April.  It was such a relief to get that project done.  His room is all done, and I love the way it turned out.  I will have to get some pictures up of his room once he cleans it up again. 

In May I spent the majority of the month cleaning up my yard.  We have natural landscaping borders, and they need to be re-cut every year with a half moon spade.  Guess who does the re-cutting?  Me.  It takes me forever, and it took especially a long time this year because I did not do it last year.  Then I got 6 cubic yards of mulch delivered and spread that all on my own, and then got my garden going. 

My front yard.  Takes a lot of work to get the edges looking nice, and all of that mulch spread.  I had trimmed all of the hedges, but alas they are starting to look messy again.

Since May I have been wanting to get back into sewing but had some issues with my sewing machine and had to take it into the shop, I had a pretty poor experience with that and was without my machine for over a month.  I will have to tell you about my machine debacle soon.

Anyways life has settled down somewhat around here for me.  My mom's symptoms have really improved as the chemotherapy has shrunken her tumors.  Although her cancer is incurable and inoperable, we are hopeful that with continued treatments she can be maintained in such a way to have a great quality of life for years to come.  My step-father gives me hope ... he has had leukemia for the past 15 years, and although he was only given months to live upon diagnosi,s he is still going strong to this very day.  He takes chemotherapy medication, but has an otherwise great quality of life despite his condition, and that is what I am hoping for with my Mom.  I continue to see her once or twice a week to help out with housework, and to just spend time with her.  I really want to thank all of you who offered me prayers when I wrote my post about my Mom, it really meant a lot. 

All 3 of my kids are off from school for the summe now, and we have been hard at work doing "learning time" daily to prevent summer slide, and I take my oldest son  to Mathnasium twice a week to work on his math skills.  I am back to cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the yard ... and now I finally feel like I can get back to crafting again too!  I have also been trying to learn Photoshop, bought a new camera, and have been hoarding fabric like never before .... but more on those topics later. 

What have you been up to?